From: henrif@python.es.ele.tue.nl (Henri Faber) Subject: Re: Fdformat questions. Date: 9 Aug 1993 08:56:40 GMT
In article <241b5u$nfb@klaava.Helsinki.FI> kankkune@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Risto Kankkunen) writes:
> However, after formatting, doing mkfs /dev/fd1 <number of blocks>
>with number of blocks set to the previously formatted non-standard
>format just gives me errors and a whole bunch of floppy controller
>resets printed to the console.
For some reason, fdformat resets the disk parameters set by setfdparm,
even if you had used the -p (permanent) switch. Just run setfdparm again
with the right params before making the fs.
It even resets the disk parameters between the formatting of the disk and the
checking for bad sectors, so using fdformat without the -n switch will result
in errors with a non-standard disk geometry.
I have formatted some disks at a capcity of 1722K, but the result is extremely
slow. But when I do the low-level format the same disks at the same capacity
with the DOS based fdformat, disk access is much faster. The DOS based
fdformat interleaves the sectors on the disk, so that an entire track can be
read within two rotations of the disk. When a disk without interleaving is
read, the drive just misses the next sector so that the disk has to spin 21
times to read a track.
Now for my question: Is it possible to tell fdformat or setfdprm to interleave
a disk?
Henri Faber
henrif@es.ele.tue.nl